The inventors have discovered that no satisfactory refined vehicle location method currently exists.
Conventional solutions provide imprecise vehicle locations, which makes vehicles difficult to find, especially for users that did not initially park the vehicle. Given that the GPS is accurate within meters in the best cases (the problem is further aggravated in areas with urban canyons), it's possible that the vehicle's location is further from that reported, or that the vehicle is nearby, but unfindable because the vehicle is obscured.
This problem is further aggravated when the vehicle is light or small (e.g., a scooter or a bicycle), since the light/small vehicle can be easily occluded behind a large object, such as a dumpster or a truck, can be left in a hard-to-access location, such as behind a fence, or even moved indoors (e.g., be stolen).
The difficulty of locating vehicles oftentimes results in poor user experience, which can reduce user retention and/or reduce personnel productivity (e.g., ranger productivity).
Furthermore, conventional solutions can't solve this problem with an on-vehicle solution, because their vehicles oftentimes lack sufficient sensors and on-board processing power. Additionally, when images or other environmental information is provided to locate the vehicle, sensitive data issues arise (e.g., images can include sensitive content, PII, etc.).
Conventional solutions also do not provide an interface for a vehicle to communicate with a management entity (e.g., ranger, management service, etc.) for vehicle recovery.
Thus, there is a need in the vehicle field to create a new and useful vehicle location system and method. This invention provides such new and useful vehicle location system and method.